Dec. 18, 2002 — It was
finals week at the University of Illinois when biology major
Peggy Gatsinos got a clear sign she was running short on sleep.

After breakfast, she explains, "I went to put the things away
and I put the cereal in the refrigerator and the milk in the
cabinet."

For reasons that scientists don't yet understand, sleep is
critical for normal functioning of the human brain. If we skimp
on it, we start making mistakes — from putting cereal in the
refrigerator to falling asleep at the wheel.

Soldiers that Never Stop

Lack of sleep has been blamed for a number of infamous
mishaps from the Chernobyl meltdown to the space shuttle
Challenger disaster. Most recently, reports suggest it was a
pilot's lack of sleep that led to the fatal crash of Sen. Paul
Wellstone's plane in Minnesota.

It's a problem that the military takes a keen interest in,
since whether or not troops get their zzz's can determine the
outcome of a battle. By devising superhuman ways of staying
awake for up to seven straight days and nights, military
officials hope to lend U.S. soldiers a strategic edge in future
conflicts.

"Eliminating the need for sleep during an operation … will
create a fundamental change in war fighting and force
employment," says a recent statement by the U.S. Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency.

To strive toward creating the no-sleep soldier, DARPA has
funded a multi-tiered program from tinkering with a soldier's
brain using magnetic resonance to analyzing the neural circuits
of birds that stay awake for days during migration. The hope is
to stump the body's need for sleep — at least temporarily.

"This program is really out of the box," says John Carney,
director of DARPA's Continuous Assisted Performance program. "We
want to look at capabilities in nature and leverage it so we can
apply it in ways that no one thought possible."

No-Sleep Masters: Dolphins and
Sparrows

One of the first places scientists are looking for answers is
in other species.

Dolphins, for example, live in water and need to stay awake
at all hours in order to breathe. To do this, it's believed the
animals keep parts of their brain awake while other parts sleep.
This allows them to stay alert and get to the surface regularly
to breathe.

The Navy's Marine Mammals Program, set up primarily to train
dolphins and sea lions to do underwater searches, is conducting
PET (positron emission tomography) scans on the animals to try
and learn more about their unusual ability. It's also doing
behavioral studies on orca whales since in the first three to
four weeks after birth, newborn orcas and their mothers appear
to stay completely active.

"The first stage is to confirm these abilities exist," says
Carney. "Then maybe we can begin applying it to humans."

Niels Rattenborg, meanwhile, is tapping the brains of tiny
birds to find answers.

Even when kept in a cage, white crown sparrows don't sleep
during the time they would normally be winging thousands of
miles in their biannual migration from Alaska to California and
back again.

"This bird will spontaneously start to hop around its cage
when it would be migrating," says Rattenborg. "At the most
during these periods they occasionally get drowsy, but they
never get any real sleep."

Rattenborg, under the guidance of Ruth Benca, both of the
University of Wisconsin, are attaching small sensors to the
sparrows' brains to monitor their brain activity during the five
to seven days and nights the birds stay awake. They're also
testing the birds' cognitive abilities during the sleepless
stints.

Part of their work is in understanding how the birds prepare
for their days without sleep. He says they've also noticed the
sparrows appear to put on significant weight just before their
migration periods.

"We think the increase in food may be due in part to the
flying," says Benca. "But it may also be due to an increased
metabolism."

Gene Tinkering

Of course, simply understanding how some animals can go for
long periods without sleeping is only the first step. The next —
finding ways to apply their abilities to people — is likely the
bigger challenge.

One way is through genetics. As Carney points out, the human
genome is full of genes whose purposes remain mysterious to
scientists. Some so-called junk DNA may not play a role in
people, but could trigger important functions in other animals.

"The other animals may be using them," said Carney. "If we
know what the genes are, then we can look for them in ourselves
and turn them on."

DARPA-funded researchers are searching for such magical genes
in mice and fruit flies.

Another approach is to improve upon an old ploy — using
pharmaceutical stimulants. For decades the military has depended
on caffeine and other, less common drugs to stay awake.

During World War II, U.S., British, German, and Japanese
soldiers were issued amphetamines to counteract fatigue and
heighten endurance. The Air Force's Surgeon General's Office has
recently acknowledged the military still occasionally prescribes
amphetamines to counter the effects of fatigue.

A more recently developed stimulant, modafinil (sold under
the name Provigil), was approved by the Federal Drug
Administration in 1999 and has been shown to keep people awake
and alert for two days straight. More than 250,000 people now
use the drug, although it was created mostly for people
suffering from narcolepsy, a condition that triggers
overwhelming impulses to sleep.

The military has tested modafinil for its usefulness in
operations, but Carney says the program is seeking a better
drug.

"Most drugs are developed for clinical diseases," he says.
"This is not a clinical disease, this is a need. We want to
select which effects we want a drug to employ."

Zapping the Brain

Rather than using drugs or gene therapy to keep awake, Yaakov
Stern and Sarah Lisanby at Columbia University believe that
finding the best treatment could just be a matter of tapping the
human brain's unused potential.

"We're finding that some people do better than others on
little sleep. I know people who can stay up all night and show
almost no ill effects," says Stern, a professor of clinical
neuropsychology at Columbia Health Sciences. "We're zeroing in
on those who do better."

Stern and Lisanby are using two cutting-edge technologies to
probe the brain with DARPA funding. Stern is using functional
magnetic resonance imaging to observe people's brains as they
perform memory tasks before and after missing sleep. Once key
areas are identified, Lisanby plans to use transcranial magnetic
stimulation (TMS) to trigger neurons to fire in these regions.

TMS is a brief, powerful magnetic field that sends electrical
pulses to the brain. Other research has shown it can be
effective in treating severe depression by stimulating neurons
in areas of the brain that become less active during depression.

Lisanby, who is an associate professor of clinical
psychiatry, says the hope is by triggering areas identified in
people who function well with little sleep, scientists can help
more vulnerable people become immune to the effects of sleep
deprivation.

Eventually Lisanby plans to treat 75 sleep-deprived soldiers
with TMS and then see how well they perform in memory tests and
military tasks.

DARPA has always been about funding grand projects with bold
goals. It was this agency, for example, that funded major
development in Stealth technology and the Internet. But sleep
and just how it rejuvenates the brain remains mysterious, and
even DARPA scientists admit they don't expect to ever completely
erase the body's need for it.

"We obviously need it," says Stern. "The idea of ridding
people of the need for sleep is attractive, but it's probably
too radical. The most we can hope for is to help people function
as well as they can when they're sleep deprived."

As she plowed her way through finals week, Gatsinos said the
idea of a safe method to skimp on sleep even for a few days —
and not feel it — is definitely appealing. "Lack of sleep
becomes lifestyle around here," she says. "And I'm pre-med, so I
know it will only get worse."